Russell Ger Biography

Russell Ger has conducted a broad spectrum of orchestral, operatic, and choral music both in North America and his home country of Australia. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in musicology with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and a Master’s in Orchestral Conducting from the Boston Conservatory. As an alumnus of the Symphony Australia Conductor Development Programme he worked with many of the top professional orchestras in Australia over a period of several years.

Russell recently completed a tour of the East Coast with renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, promoting the recording project they completed for Sony Music in late 2011. The tour saw performances before packed houses at Boston's Symphony Hall, Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, Long Island’s Tilles Performing Arts Center, and an audience of 6,000 at the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn New York. Selections from the disc were also performed at the PBS ‘Great Performances’ 40th Anniversary Gala at Lincoln Center in November of 2012, and later this year they will appear at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

One of the highlights of Russell’s early career came in 2003 when he conducted the finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. For a major fundraising campaign he assembled a massed community chorus accompanied by an orchestra comprising Sydney Symphony and Australian Opera-Ballet Orchestra members. The following year he repeated this performance at the Sydney Convention Centre for an audience exceeding 3,000.